


Binary Sunsets

by Yours_Truly_Commander_Shepard



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Force Ghost(s), Possibly My Last Star Wars Work, Post-Canon, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Post-TRoS, Sadness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-20
Updated: 2019-12-20
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:32:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21869062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yours_Truly_Commander_Shepard/pseuds/Yours_Truly_Commander_Shepard
Summary: There's a Jedi down at the old Lars farm.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 20
Kudos: 139





	Binary Sunsets

**Author's Note:**

> Composed and posted three hours after leaving the Rise of Skywalker.

There’s a Jedi down at the old Lars farm. 

That’s what people say, anyway, as they gossip over the morning’s commerce or the evening’s chores. She’s fixing the place up, getting the evaporators running, bringing in a small fleet of droids to help her.

Rilla isn’t sure she believes them; who ever heard of a Jedi who runs a moisture farm? In Tosche Station, most people barely remember the Jedi at all. 

Aren’t the Jedi supposed to be warriors? Rilla gets a look at the Jedi when she comes in to sell the water harvest, and the Jedi looks more like a scavenger in her grey headwrap and sturdy boots. Jedi use laser swords, and this woman has a staff that makes her look more like a Tusken Raider who has taken up caravanning than a fighter.

But then one day Rilla’s friend Bekel gets caught by slavers on the way back from Mos Eisley, and they all find out that the Jedi (if that’s what she is) can for sure fight when she wants to. Bekel gets a ride back on the Jedi’s speeder, enough water to wash off the bits of slaver stuck on her cheek, and a job. 

Rilla’s a little jealous of that. Farmhand is a much better trajectory than either of them were on, which was skin girl to scavenger, or the other way around. 

The Jedi doesn’t come in to town to trade after that; she sends Bekel instead, all big-headed with her new importance. Bekel swears the woman down at the Lars farm is a Jedi, and a Skywalker to boot. Which has to be a lie. The Skywalkers haven’t been in these parts for fifty years. 

When Bekel spends her new wages on whiskey, she says other things. The Jedi’s sand-touched, she admits. Mad. Talks to people who aren’t there. Stares where nothing is. 

Rilla warns Bekel that the Lars farm is haunted. How can she live over the bones of the Lars family? It’s enough to drive anyone out into the dunes. 

Bekel nods along and agrees those sands are full of ghosts. Things move without being touched. Floors shake with footfalls even after the Jedi’s asleep in her bed. 

But Bekel goes back that night. She says the Jedi needs her help. 

After a few months, people don’t talk about the Jedi as much down at Tosche Station. She’s a fixture within years, and she doesn’t act very much like a Jedi, after all.

Not like Master Finn, whose stories have begun to filter from spaceport to spaceport. He’s a proper Jedi, in a proper Jedi temple, teaching proper Jedi things. 

Rilla’s losing her mind with boredom bit by bit, walking the power lines and mapping the junctions in need of repair. Her days stretch out ahead of her in endless blurry unison. She tosses a bit of trash ahead of her as she walks, kicking it ahead, then pulling it back. She imagines dying one day in the desert, replaced within the week by another young bit of Tosche station refuse. 

She hears the Jedi’s speeder before she sees it, and she waits. The Jedi wraps her head like a proper daughter of Tatooine, but Rilla knows it’s her before she undoes her face covering. 

“Rilla,” the Jedi tells her, and somehow Rilla can’t be surprised that the Jedi knows her name. 

Rilla nods.

“I felt you,” the Jedi says. “Your anger.”

And that’s a thing Rilla’s always wondered, how nobody else in the world has noticed that Rilla’s form shelters a small coal of rage at how empty her world is, how much sand and sun and heat there are to bake all the life out of the few wretched people who live out their days on this planet. How it is burning up the fragile bit of life Rilla’s kept hidden in her marrow. 

That the Jedi knows is like a dipper of cool water down the back of her neck. Someone has noticed Rilla. It’s taken too many years. Too many sunsets. But now someone knows. 

“Yes,” Rilla whispered. “I can feel you too.” 

The Jedi sighs. “I suppose I better take you back with me for tonight. Finn can figure out what to do with you.”

Rilla doesn’t know what that means, but she climbs onto the back of the Jedi’s speeder and they ride in silence back to the Lars farm. 

Bekel’s eyes nearly bug out of her head when she sees Rilla step out into the courtyard, and Rilla can’t help but feel a quick surge of vindication at that. The Jedi’s arched eyebrow of amusement cuts the feeling a bit. 

Bekel’s quick enough to play the gracious host, though. 

It’s a strange place, like Rilla thought. Evaporators and repair droids, sure. But also droids making message crystals. Droids making holo-projectors. Even, most peculiarly, droids copying books. Real books, made of paper and hide. You couldn’t even sell that kind of thing at Mos Espa. 

She gets a peek at the Jedi’s quarters, though. Full of those paper books, and a bed big made up for two. She wonders what all Bekel’s doing for the Jedi besides the washing up, but the other girl turns red and insists that she sleeps in the guest house. 

Four suns later, the other Jedi come for Rilla on the junkiest old Corellian freighter she’s ever seen. Rilla’s somehow earned a free one-way ticket to a green planet. 

You could come too, says a handsome fellow in a robe to the Jedi. She smiles sadly at him. You know why I can’t leave, she replies, and they have a bit of a misty embrace while Rilla and Bekel goggle at them. 

Rilla leaves Tatooine behind. She imagines she’ll never go back, but after a few years, it’s her turn to pilot the creaking old freighter back down to the water farm and load up on texts explaining, very simply and plainly, the workings of the Force. Master Finn’s not altogether happy about distributing those to wide circulation, but Rilla’s discerned by then that the Jedi’s consultation with him on this matter is more a courtesy than a necessity.

Water is very valuable on Tatooine, after all, and the Jedi seems rather determined to publish her works.

It’s nearly forty years later when Rilla touches down to find Bekel alone waiting for her.

Bekel helps load in the crates of message crystals, then begs a short ride to Mos Eisley for herself and the publication droids. Rilla has plenty of cargo space, and is glad for the company. Just you as a passenger, Rilla confirms. Bekel nods. It’s a new book, this time. More of a novel than a manual. The _Fall of the Skywalkers_. Possibly a better seller than the Force manuals, Bekel thinks. Better managed from a spaceport than a farm, in any event, and Bekel’s set aside enough to retire very comfortably. 

Rilla already knows the farm is empty, but she takes a last look as she lifts off. Sand has already begun to pile along the retaining walls, and it won’t be long until the desert reclaims it again.

There was a Jedi down at the old Lars farm, people say for a few more years in Tosche Station. But not for very many. Sand covers the wells, and eventually even the ghosts are gone. 

**Author's Note:**

> A little broken-hearted to see it all end like this.


End file.
